Like jewels in a vault, our precious genetic material is stored in the nucleus of a cell—sequestered away from potentially damaging cellular components and toxins so that no harm can come to it. Yet over the course of a ...

As different cells penetrate through tight, confining spaces within tissue, they often deform, causing their nuclei to rupture under the associated stress. A new study led by Cornell University engineers finds that cancer ...

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Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) researchers have identified 27 genes in brain stem cells that are prone to a type of DNA damage. The fragility of those genes could explain why they are often mutated or deleted in cancers ...

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(Medical Xpress)—Two groups of researchers working on two different projects have made inroads into understanding the cause of alopecia—the gradual loss of hair during aging. One team, with members from Japan, the U.S. ...

A team of Georgia State University researchers is fighting cancers using a combination of therapies and recently found ways that radiation could maximize responses to novel immune-based therapeutic approaches to fight cancer.

DNA damage can lead to gene inactivation or deregulation and cause various diseases such as cancer; however, many DNA repair mechanisms allow cells to survive against such damage. A study lead by Antoine Simoneau of the laboratory ...

DNA repair

DNA repair refers to a collection of processes by which a cell identifies and corrects damage to the DNA molecules that encode its genome. In human cells, both normal metabolic activities and environmental factors such as UV light and Radiation can cause DNA damage, resulting in as many as 1 million individual molecular lesions per cell per day. Many of these lesions cause structural damage to the DNA molecule and can alter or eliminate the cell's ability to transcribe the gene that the affected DNA encodes. Other lesions induce potentially harmful mutations in the cell's genome, which affect the survival of its daughter cells after it undergoes mitosis. Consequently, the DNA repair process is constantly active as it responds to damage in the DNA structure.

The rate of DNA repair is dependent on many factors, including the cell type, the age of the cell, and the extracellular environment. A cell that has accumulated a large amount of DNA damage, or one that no longer effectively repairs damage incurred to its DNA, can enter one of three possible states:

The DNA repair ability of a cell is vital to the integrity of its genome and thus to its normal functioning and that of the organism. Many genes that were initially shown to influence lifespan have turned out to be involved in DNA damage repair and protection. Failure to correct molecular lesions in cells that form gametes can introduce mutations into the genomes of the offspring and thus influence the rate of evolution.